...to make a difference let your life's footprints mark the way for others to follow. However, be prepared to be made a fool for Christ.
RESPICE AD FINEM.

Sunday, January 06, 2008

What Is Art, again?

Maybe the above question is something we ought to ask often if only to highlight the attendant difficulties and uneasy confusion people encounter when trying to define what art is. The oft-quoted cliché that beauty is in the eye of the beholder could apply also in judging what art is, whether serious, pop, or whatever.

This untended difficulty reared its head during the last entry on my poster collection of Norman P. Rockwell works. Many critics had panned Rockwell’s works by denying him the honor of considering his work as serious art; instead that he was simply an illustrator however gifted he was as such.

And I always have a problem with such restrictive delineation because my mind has not really been able to grasp the exact parameters of what serious art really is. Should one rely strictly on the judgments of the art critics? But don’t they disagree amongst themselves? And many would go further and decry the lack of objectivity or relevance in many admired critics.

Anyway, I am not making this orphaned confusion my personal problem, because I simply follow my gut feelings and try to work up inspiring vibes about the works that appeal to what I could consider my sense of what is beautiful, tasteful, or extraordinary.

It is written that Hollywood movie producers push to make sure that their movies get a certain kind of rating, like an R-rating, because they know certain certain sectors of society will raise a howl. That insures that curiosity-seekers will troop to the moviehouses to see for themselves.